Gadgetory

hey I'm seen that's right Chris with an exclusive first look at the Philips clear.led this is a design oriented bulb that's made for exposed aesthetics you want to have the sort of bathroom lights that shine out the filaments exposed this is the bulb that's going to mimic that it does that using this sort of crystal light crown in the middle of it that going to catch the light from the LEDs and send it sparkling out sort of like the old filaments of days past now this is a 40 watt replacement bulb that uses six watts to put out 470 lumens worth of light that gives it an efficiency rating just under 80 lumens per watt which is pretty good that's the same wattage as you'll see from the cree 40 watt replacement although the philips clear puts out an extra 20 lumens that's also a little bit more efficient than the standard philips 40 watt equivalent LED which puts out the same 470 lumens using 8 watts so how does the philips clear compared to the cree 40 watt replacement and the existing philips 40 watt replacement in terms of light quality well let's test them out take a look so here on the left we've got the cree 40 watt replacement LED moving here to the middle we've got the philips standard 40 watt replacement and then over here on the right is the philips clear so looking at these three bulbs all together we can see that they've got a nice 2700 k across the board we've got warm incandescent light from all three of them and the other thing that you notice right away is that the clear exposed aesthetic of the clear LED really stands out in comparison to the standard Philips and the Cree the kind of bathroom light look of that exposed bulb over your mirror works best with this bulb I think this is probably the bulb that I'd want in my bathroom the other thing you might notice is that the films clear looks a little bit dimmer than these two and that's not the bulbs fault it's actually the European version of the bulb that we're looking at today the US version not available to us yet and there's something that gets lost in translation when it comes to brightness from Europe to America so it's a little dimmer than it should be we expect it to be brighter when we see the US version a little later this year now Philips isn't releasing pricing or exact availability info on this bulb quite yet we'll keep you updated on that front but all they're saying for now is that it will be available in the US and in Europe by the end of the years so stay tuned for more here on CNET appliances I'm Rui Crist